Pathos In Foster Wallace's Speech

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Foster Wallace uses an anecdote in his speech that pertains to pathos. Pathos is a quality that causes people to feel sympathy and sadness (Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2015.). He talks about these two men arguing in a bar over religion and their beliefs. With this story, he demonstrates that two people, while considering the same situation, can get very different meanings from it just because of their beliefs, but it is also not necessarily wrong. He then goes on to state that you do not know what a person has gone though and how that has shaped their beliefs. At the same time, we get too tied up in our own beliefs that we become “blind” to what we are missing. The use of pathos is also present towards the end of his
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